Originally, Tim and the team had decided to spend a month in the bony den of theirs, just so they could be more prepared to face the challenges of The Old Sea, but under the new circumstances, they decided to camp out for two months! They wanted to progress first, and survive second, but neither of these two things came without the other, so camping it out was a must!
During this period, not only did they accumulate a lot of mana, but Timothy also made a massive army for the team to use! He had been very calculative about it, so at the end of the nine-week session he both had a decent army, and plenty of dark mana to fuel them! Technically he could extend his army of slaves almost endlessly, but that would be a bit of an overkill, so he decided against it.